Sunglow
by Nymph Du Pave
Summary: Chloe's perspective. Nostalgic of the days gone by Chloe begins to think... Part One up.


  
TITLE: Sunglow   
AUTHOR: Nymph Du Pave   
FANDOM: Smallville   
RATING: PG-13   
SUMMARY: Chloe introspection, which is sometimes the most fun.   
DISCLAIMER: The WB, DC Comics, MillarGoughInk, Tolin, Robbins, and Davola [along with whomever else] own this wonderful show. I am merely borrowing the characters to use in my own evil ways and will try to return them as mentally cognizant and stable as when I took them [with the exception of the incredibly handsome and elegant Michael Rosenbaum of whom I might never let go ;)], but I can't make any promises. The Muse controls these fingers.   
AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is not a CLex [:(] but it's still Chloe and a bit of Clark, so it was still really fun.   
FEEDBACK: Hope you like it. This is only the first part, however, and I'd love to hear some thoughs, comments and ideas [even though I've started on the next part and am almost through].   
AUTHOR'S EMAIL: nymph_du_pave@hotmail.com 

* * *

**Sunglow   
By Nymph Du Pave**

The heat of the early afternoon beat down on her back as she sat on her roof, writing. Occasionally there would be a glint of silver from the pool below, inviting her down, but it was mostly just the computer and her words. 

All the beauty of a summer day and she couldn't relax. The clean cerulean beckoning, it's cool waving body seductive in a way so simple, so pleasing that it almost won out. A simple phone call and she could be enveloped in the company of her two guys and hours of fun. 

They'd start off in the pool playing games like Marco Polo, volleyball, wave bash and shark in the water. They'd bomb each other and super-soak each other and tackle each other until their bodies shriveled up like prunes. 

Well, not Clark's, she thought, absently tapping the delete buttons. She couldn't have all those z's that she'd been mindlessly typing. 

_We never stayed long enough for him to pruney._ That hadn't struck her as odd until just recently. 

_Then we'd have a cookout._

Martha and Jonathan would bring the salad stuff, Ronni and Jamal would bring the desserts and her father would cook the beef. 

For hours it would last, smelling and sounding and feeling like peace, home and perfection. 

Then would come the night, where they'd sleep over in Clark's Fortress, giggling and telling freaky stories -- Chloe's were always the best -- watching horror movies on the PTC. Sometimes they'd drink a little alcohol, but really, that was Pete's thing. Chloe was always on the lookout for something strange, something weird, and wanted to be ready for it when it happened. 

Clark said he didn't like the taste or the feeling, but Chloe suspected that he was lying. She figured that alcohol not only had little to no effect on him, but he was worried about becoming less cautious when it finally, if ever, did hit his tolerance level. 

She knew that he was a big kid, also odd, but there was no reason that four shots of scotch should have no effect. He'd been surprised at her and Pete's stories at what scotch did to people, then had declined to drink it again. 

Chloe had always noticed that he was reserved when it came to his strengths and started to become even more so the last year and a half. 

She sighed and looked at the pool again, trying to take her mind off of Clark and his secrets and his lies. 

She had things to do. It was a secret, but she was writing a book. Collecting information and writing a book: Smallville and It's Abnormalities. Okay, well, not exactly Pulitzer Prize winning title, but she'd think of one later. Right now it was about the information and getting it all down. 

She wasn't going to put Clark in there specifically, but she was going to put Clark-like events down. Almost everything odd that happened around or because of him. They were all going under the miscellaneous file. As a friend she wouldn't indicate Clark, but as a journalist, she wouldn't forget her mission in life. 

She had the book as well as some personal work to do. She had a few articles to post on her site, some pictures to take of her rock samples and how they were changing the living organism that they were exposed to, and the dishes to do. 

Or... she could call Clark. He could call Pete. They could have the pool party and everything would move on from there. 

She was sick and tired of growing up, sick and tired of doing what she'd planned. If it had nothing to do with her work, she hadn't done anything spontaneous in... well, in a long time. 

She was also sick and tired of longing for 'the good ole days'. She saw the way her father looked at pictures of her when she was a child. When life was uncomplicated and her mother had still been the most beautiful, amazing woman in the world. Before Matilda had been weighted down by disappointment. By what she called the 'real life'. 

It had always seemed to Chloe that her mother tended to give up to early on things, and that her 'real life' was just the sum total of the consequences of such actions. Had she ever learned to stick with things through the thick and thin of it, then maybe she could have learned found relief and pride within her own accomplishments. Maybe real life would have been more about the results instead of the struggle. 

Maybe Matilda and Gabe would still be together. 

Chloe sat back and away from her laptop. It was getting warm sitting on the tar roof. The shingles hadn't been put on yet, and it had this cheap, half-assed look to it. Her father had been meaning to do that for months and Clark and his father had volunteered to help. It was really about time, though. The shingles had been off since the storm. 

Clark and his father would come over to help Gabe who would, thankfully, keep the shirt on over his beer belly. Later though Jonathon would strip his off and, no matter how many times she'd seen him shirtless, she'd feel the feminine flare of sexual physical appreciation. No matter how sick it made her later to think of her best friend's father as hot, no matter how well she would block it out of her mind, at the time, in the moment, her temperature would raise, her eyebrows would go up, and she wouldn't be able to stop herself from staring. The man didn't have the perfect body, not like his son, but he had a nice chest and what Chloe thought was the perfect chest hair. Light, thick but not Robin Williams thick, and springy even as the day went on and the sweat filmed his body. There were still the slight love handles that Martha poked and teased him about, but certainly for a man his of age... 

Then Clark would take his shirt off a few minutes later and all the sexiness that Jonathon might have permeated would vanish. Clark would be the only thing in her eyes. Well defined abs and arms, amazing chest, strong pecs... Gorgeous. 

Clark. 

Clark from the dance had been like the Clark of her dreams. After all that was Lana-Lana-Lana and Lex-Lex-Lex, and before he'd completely vanished leaving her scared and in the hands of a pitying Pete... 

For a time he'd just been hers, hers to look at, hers to dance with and, well, hers to almost kiss. 

She remembered the drop of her stomach, the tingle in her lips and the rapidly advancing heartbeat. All signs that she was either about to kiss the one person in the world made for her- 

Or she was going to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. 

She frowned. Were those the symptoms of CM poisoning? Or minor electrocution? 

She heard a loud screech and gritted her teeth. She hated the sound of old, tinny metal screeching against, well, anything really. Her father had found her apparently and figured it was best to move the heavy patio table from in front of the ladder by dragging it inch by inch by inch. 

She'd climbed on top of it specifically so he wouldn't think her on top of the house. 

There was the thump, thump, thump of heavy male legs climbing up the wooden ladder and she was sure he hadn't made so much noise the last time he'd climbed up there. She'd have to get on his case about the diet that he was supposed to be on. Though it only kept him going for a week, it always worked. 

Hand rubbing her shoulder blades and, yeah, that felt good. The hand was cool and it felt nice between her shoulder blades. She'd been bent over for so long that her back had started to get sore. She, oblivious to all but her pondering and her writing, hadn't even noticed. 

"Thanks, Dad." 

"No problem, punkin," Clark chirped, clearly amused. 

She spun around and stared at her best friend. Now this was like him, always like him. Grrr... He'd always be there when you were thinking about him, but not necessarily when you wanted him. 

The truthful side of her brain shot out that there was never a time when she hadn't wanted Clark - around or just in general context.. 

"He says 'pumpkin'." She turned back to her laptop to save and shut down. Clark stayed back. He'd learned a long time ago as had Pete that Chloe was more than simply private about her work. She was traditionally reticent. "And he doesn't have that thick an accent." 

"Right." 

She closed the laptop and put it back in the case. It had been out in the sun too long anyway. 

She laid down beside him, staring at the clouds covering the sun. When the little white puffs moved, that big yellow thing was going to be bright as hell. 

"Wanna go swimming?" 

How did he do that? Was ESP also part of Clark's multitude of hidden talents? Certainly a possibility. 

"Maybe." 

"I can call Pete." 

"Hmmm," she said noncommittally. She closed her eyes. 

"Could have a cookout." 

"Hmmm." 

"Come on," Clark said without much enthusiasm. "You know you were thinking it too." 

Jesus, he was weird. "Maybe," she muttered. 

There was silence after that and she knew Clark was leaving the next move up to her. 

She rolled her shut eyes. Leaving anything up to her was not a good idea. 

After the tornado past, they had all been picked up by worried and the relieved parents. Martha had come searching for Clark. No one knew where he was. Martha had played the part well, but to Chloe's trained eyes she didn't seem that heavily worried about her son. Instead she'd begun to focus primarily on her husband. 

Then the story came from Lana. 25 miles out, on the outskirts of Smallville, she had seen Clark, screamed at him, thinking that it was insane for him to be standing out in the middle of that. When she called for him she'd expected him to get into the safely of the truck and then... 

The she had been caught in the eye of the Tornado. 

[Chloe hadn't broken into Lana's rendition to mention that, technically the 'eye' of the tornado, the inside of the cyclone, was supposed to be the calm area. She just let Lana go on.] 

And inside, whirling around in the funnel, the truck had just stopped. The dirt and grass and a tractor... It was all whirling around her. 

[Coincidentally, this was where most people figured that Lana had passed out. But not her, not Chloe. Oh, no. She believed]. 

The truck had begun a very slow descent to the ground and then away from the winds. 

Once the winds were far enough away for her to see the world around her, Clark was getting inside the truck, holding her, asking her if she was okay. 

That was when everyone believed she woke up. But Lana refused to change her story. 

And Clark refused to corroborate it. He told people that, yes, the truck had been lifted, but not far, and not for long. It certainly had never gone into the tornado. 

And this was why Lana was no longer talking to him. 

He sighed beside her. "Okay. No cookout. How about if you and me just hang for a while." 

She nodded. "Okay." 

It had only been two months since the tornado, but it had felt like forever. Since that time Clark had not once mentioned the dance, the kiss, Lana or the storm other than to call and make sure she and her father were alright. 

She never asked about his disappearance. He'd explained that he was worried about his family, had picked up a car outside the gym and had made it as quickly as possible to the roads. That's when he saw Lana. He saw that once he got in the car with Lana, the car he'd driven got picked up. That's when he decided that it was time to leave. 

No one asked him what car he took. 

There was never a car reported missing from the gym area. 

This was Smallville, but even such, Chloe was surprised. So she'd asked around. There was one person left dead from the storm. His car was missing. Rumor had it that misfit teens had stolen it and driven it to the gym and that Clark happened to pick that one. It didn't matter that Clark said he'd taken either a silver or gray -- he didn't remember, and Chloe noticed that the times he didn't remember something were times that centered around suspicion -- and the car that was missing was light blue. 

It was a mistake, people said. Something anyone could have confused. Besides, they all said, it really wasn't important at the time. The color of the car was not on the boy's mind. 

All that mattered was that Smallville's famous princess had been saved by Smallville's infamous knight. Once again. 

And still, with all the mystery, all the lies and easy deception, she loved him. With every bone in her journalistic body screaming about Clark's inaccuracies, every millimeter of her heart was three times as loud. He was everything she wanted to discover. In more ways than one. She wanted to study him, she wanted to fondle him, she wanted to be trusted by him. 

"But mostly she just wanted to kiss him," she murmured. 

"Huh?" 

She shrugged. "And ending to a romance novel I was reading." 

Clark snickered. Ever since he and Pete had found her 'sex books' they'd considered her a porn freak. In their minds the romance novel to a woman was the equivalent to porn mags to guys. 

And if she hadn't ended up reading and rereading some of them, picturing Clark over and over, feeling the tingle between her legs, picturing Clark's mouth there, taking care of that tingle while in reality her fingers did the work... 

Yeah. She'd agreed with theirobservation. Silently though. She'd only grumbled aloud and made the two of them snicker even more. 

"Girly porn, girly porn!" Clark poked her in the ribs. 

"Ouch!" Slapped his hand away, trying to get the images out of her mind. 

The first time she'd read a romance novel that mentioned oral sex, she was fourteen and in her third year of her 'Clark Obsession' as Pete referred to it. 

[As far as her undercover reporter side went, that much was true, but her love for him was plain and simple. No stalking, no taping, no breathy phone calls - though Clark would probably get a kick out of those. No sticky webs to mate in or bureaus full of pictures... Just love. Plain old unrequited love.] 

Fourteen. Third year of being in love. And the moment that she'd read about the hero shoving the heroine down on the bed, her mind had switched from her being inside the head of the main character, to her being the main character. 

When a mouth covered a nipple, her breast had tingled, and her right nipple -- the same one as the heroine -- had hardened. When there were heated kisses, she would lick her lips, feeling them there and down the side of her throat. And when the hero had nibbled a trail from the heroine's collarbone to between her legs, Chloe had throbbed, picturing Clark's hair tickling her belly, feeling Clark's tongue doing marvelous things to her. 

That had been one of the most powerful sexual experiences of her life. And, at fourteen, she wasn't sure how to make herself orgasm. She had been afraid to touch herself, of pushing in where she'd never done anything but, well, clean. 

The thought of Clark though... It had been powerful enough to get her started. She'd never imagined that her body could feel such things. She hadn't yet achieved orgasm even now, but, God. She still felt amazing things. 

She wished that Clark could do that to her now, in real life. 

"What are you thinking about?" a soothing voice asked her. 

"Sex," she whispered sleepily. 

"Really," it whispered back. "With who?" 

"Well," she groggily replied. "There was Clark's dad, after the threesome with Lex and his dad." 

"What?!" Clark shrieked. 

She kept the grin off her face. Poor, poor gullible Clark. "Yeah. Lionel's a very sexy, elder gently-man." 

"Chloe." 

"And Lex is rumored to be even more generously endowed than the senior version." 

"Chloe!" 

She couldn't help but laugh. 

"Thanks! Thanks a lot. Just what I wanted to think about. Lex's freakin' penis. Yuck!" 

She laughed at him and poked him in the ribs. "How's that for you?" 

"Right up there with peas, Brussels sprouts, and walking in on Pete's great-grandmother changing." 

She held her stomach. It hurt, she was laughing so much. "He never did fully forgive you for that!" 

"God, like I did it on purpose!" 

"I hope Lionel," she gasped out. "-is not as shriveled as Great Nana Ross." 

"CHLOE! Why did you have to even bring this up?" 

She opened her eyes and looking at Clark. The brightness of the sun on her eyelids had turned everything a deeper, richer color, everything with a tint of slightly blue. She loved that effect, especially when floating lazily in the pool. 

She suddenly wished she was because then Clark, sexy yummy Clark, would be wet and bare and splashing with her. 

He used to pick me up, she thought. And put me on his shoulders. 

Who she wouldn't maim to do that right now. And she'd prefer to main a certain brunette if she had a choice. 

"Stupid?" 

She looked down at him from her side, head propped on her elbow. He was still lying down. 

"You think I'm stupid enough that I would tell you who I was thinking about." 

He shook his head. "I wasn't hoping that you would be stupid, just either really honest or..." 

"Or," she prompted. 

"Or..." He grinned, motives exposed. "Really sleepy." 

"Uh-huh." 

"I just wanted to know." 

"Why?" 

He shrugged. "I don't know." 

"Liar." 

"I don't." 

She laid back down just to look up directly into the sun. 

She winced. "Yeah, that was bright." 

Clark sighed from behind her and a cloud passed overhead. She opened her eyes, feeling free of the blinding light in her eyes and found- 

Clark. Instead of a cloud. 

"Who were you thinking about?" 

She gulped. "I'm not telling." 

"Who?!' 

"Lex and his gigantic penis!" she yelled not caring if her senior citizen, veteran neighbors overheard. 

"That's it!" Clark straddled her. Her heart started pounding and her mind raced. Where could this end up? Could it end with kissing and rolling around on the roof? Could it end with Clark becoming hard and flustered? Or is that just where things would start? 

She shut her eyes and sighed. No. This would not end like that. She'd damn well better stop reading those stupid romances because it was doing things to her usually very sensible brain. 

"Chloe?" 

"What?" To her, her voice sounded strained and lost, but she new that Clark would never be able to tell. Clark, who seemed to be adept at ignoring every sign that maybe things weren't quite on the friendly, would just breeze past the little signs. Unless she had I LOVE CLARK tattooed to every inch of her body and painted on all of her clothing, he wouldn't notice. And even then it depends on just what his attention was focused on. 

"I, um, I'm not sure what exactly is happening." 

She opened her eyes and found him staring at her oddly. "What... what do you mean?" 

His eyes became heavy. His red tongue came out and moistened his full, pink lips. "Why aren't you, you know, struggling?" 

  
Continued soon...   



End file.
